22 May 2013

Confession: we’ve barely had company in our apartment in months. Months! With the single exception of a friend staying over with short notice, we’ve had nobody coming for a visit, nobody staying overnight en route to another destination, nobody stopping by for drinks.

Second confession: Mr. P and I have high standards for cleanliness when we know to expect company, but when we don’t... well. They... lower.

Now guess what our apartment looks like!

But this weekend we’ll have company for the first time in a while, when Mr. P’s parents are coming for an overnight visit. And I’m glad to have them, because if they weren’t coming to stay? This place would just get worse and worse.

So, in the spirit of spring cleaning and preparing for company, I’ve been digging in and clearing out a lot of junk. No, not junk. Trash. There was a lot of trash just... laying around. Behold:

Dead plants. Dead plants that I’ve kept in the bay window behind my kitchen sink for a year. WHILE DEAD.

Post-it notes for VERY IMPORTANT IDEAS. At least, important enough to keep the note laying around for weeks but not important enough to actually do.

A six-month-old receipt (for a steal of a chair) that was, inexplicably, lost in a faux potted plant and only recovered when I finally pulled it out to dust.

Broken sunglasses, beyond the possibility of repair (the frame is totally snapped apart) and for which a replacement pair was bought a month ago.

A jar of honey that is no less than a decade old, rock-solid, and one of three containers of honey in our pantry.

Cheap moisturizer that I stopped using months ago because it makes my delicate-flower skin angry.

More receipts, for repairs done on the home we no longer own, that I have bizarrely stored in a pile under my nightstand for the last year.

One of the two toilet brushed we own. We had twice as many toilet brushes than actual toilets.

And finally:

The same mysterious one-inch piece of baseboard I complained about TWO WEEKS AGOand then did not throw away but instead relocated to a different drawer. I mean. What.

Whew, that feels better, getting all that off my chest and out of my house! And hopefully you all feel better knowing just how slobby I can be when no one is looking.

.

I’m a real-life red-headed stepchild, recently transplanted from Nashville, TN to St. Louis, MO, with my husband, Mr. P. Here you can read about my many projects as a real-life scientist pretending to be a designer in my spare time.